​NTU names senior leadership team to support incoming President Professor Subra Suresh

Published on : 16-Aug-2017

​Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has announced the senior leadership team which will support President-Designate Prof Subra Suresh when he assumes office on 1 January 2018.

In consultation with various academic and administrative leaders on campus, as well as Chairman and members of the NTU Board of Trustees, Prof Suresh has selected the three Vice-Presidents who will form the University’s core leadership team, with effect from 1 January 2018. In the new leadership structure, Prof Suresh will be assisted by three Vice-Presidents overseeing academic, research, and administration matters.

Prof Ling San, currently Dean of NTU’s College of Science, will be the next NTU Provost and Vice-President for Academics, while Chief of Staff Prof Lam Khin Yong will continue as Vice-President for Research, a position he has held since 2014. Ms Tan Aik Na, currently Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Financial Officer, will be appointed Vice-President for Administration and Chief Financial Officer.

“I am grateful to Ling San, Khin Yong, and Aik Na for their willingness to take on these important roles and for their commitment to NTU. Steering a global university like NTU in its next phase of growth requires a strong and cohesive leadership team,” said Prof Suresh. “I know that I can count on a very capable senior leadership team of vice- presidents along with the enthusiastic support of the Chairman and members of the NTU Board of Trustees, the deans, and other academic and administrative leaders from across the university. This group of highly talented, dedicated, and energetic colleagues will help chart the next course in NTU’s exciting journey, which will have a profound impact on education, research, innovation, and creativity in Asia and the world.”

Together with his senior team, Prof Suresh plans to spend the next several months on a listening tour, meeting a wide range of faculty, staff, students, alumni, collaborators, and stakeholders of the university, in Singapore and across the globe.

Prof Ling San: Provost and Vice-President for Academics

Prof Ling San has been the Dean of NTU’s College of Science since 2011. Under his leadership, the college has made excellent progress with its three young schools – the School of Biological Sciences (SBS), the School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences (SPMS), and the new Asian School of Environment (ASE).

An expert in cryptography and coding, Prof Ling has received more than S$20 million in external funding and university grants to further his research. His research interests range from applications of algebra and number theory to combinatorial designs, coding theory, cryptography, and sequences.

“I look forward to working together with Prof Suresh and other members of the university’s senior leadership as we enter a very exciting phase of NTU’s evolution,” said Prof Ling. “I am humbled to be given the opportunity to play a bigger role in NTU’s future success, building on our past achievements and strengths. The university has made great strides in the quality of its education and research. Moving forward, providing a world-class education for our students will continue to be our key focus.”

Until Prof Ling San assumes the position of Provost and Vice President of Academics on 1 Jan 2018, Prof Lam Khin Yong, the Chief of Staff and Vice-President (Research), will continue as the Acting Provost, a role he took up in Feb 2017.

Prof Ling is active in public and government service, as well as in local and international professional bodies. He is currently President of the South East Asian Mathematical Society and Second Vice-President of the Singapore National Academy of Science, as well as the immediate past President of the Singapore Mathematical Society. He is a Fellow of both the Singapore National Academy of Science and Cambridge Commonwealth Society. He also serves on various talent search and grant award selection committees here and abroad.

Beyond academia, Prof Ling has served at the halfway house, Breakthrough Missions, since 1994, where he has counselled more than 1,000 former drug addicts. An educator at heart, he has received a string of teaching awards throughout his career, and written several textbooks for undergraduates and graduate students.

Trilingual in English, Chinese and French, Prof Ling joined NTU in 2005, after 13 years at the National University of Singapore, as a Professor of Mathematical Sciences. He became the founding Head of NTU’s Mathematical Sciences division in the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS) and was subsequently appointed Chair of SPMS from 2008 to 2010. In 2016, he was concurrently appointed Professor of Computer Science & Engineering.

Prof Ling earned a first class honours and a master’s in mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and his PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Prof Lam Khin Yong: Vice-President for Research

Prof Lam Khin Yong, the current Acting Provost, has been the NTU Vice-President (Research) since 2014 and Chief of Staff since 2011. He will continue his role as the Vice-President (Research) to guide NTU’s university-wide research agenda and its implementation. His responsibilities will include research planning and policy development, research funding strategies, and research infrastructure development.

Prof Lam has an established track record in research and industry collaborations, and in supporting the translation of research into innovations. Previously the CEO of NTU Innovation from 2012 to 2013, he was the Associate Provost for Graduate Education & Special Projects from 2008 to 2011. He joined NTU in 2006 as the Dean/Chair of the School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), where he was the Executive Director of the A*STAR Graduate Academy.

Together with his NTU colleagues, Prof Lam has been a driver of the University’s collaborations with some of the biggest industry and academic partners. These include NTU’s joint lab with Rolls-Royce, the first Corporate Lab funded by the National Research Foundation and, more recently, the NTU-ST Engineering Robotics ADVANCe Corporate Lab, SMRT-NTU Smart Urban Rail Corporate Lab, and Delta-NTU Corporate Lab for Cyber-Physical Systems.

He steered the development of TUM CREATE, NTU’s high-profile collaboration with Germany’s Technische Universität München (TUM), and the Cambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore (CARES), set up with the University of Cambridge.

Prof Lam received his first class honours in mechanical engineering from Imperial College London and his master’s and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also attended the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School. In 2016, he received an Honorary Professorship from the Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Ms Tan Aik Na joined NTU in August 2016 as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO)-Designate, and assumed the role of CFO on 1 January 2017.

In April 2017, she was concurrently appointed Chief Administrative Officer, overseeing Finance, Human Resources, Legal, NTU Shared Services, Information and Technology Services, and Housing and Auxiliary Services. She is also currently overseeing Alumni and Development.

As head of NTU’s administration, she leads the University in modernising and strengthening its administrative capabilities through a variety of initiatives. They include streamlining and driving consistency of administrative policies and practices to reduce the administrative burden on its staff and students, as well as upgrading the University’s technological capabilities, workforce and leadership capabilities.

Prior to joining NTU, Ms Tan served as Finance Transformation Leader of The Chemours Company, a spin-off from DuPont. In that capacity, she oversaw the establishment of a global finance function across more than 40 countries to support the needs of the new publicly traded company.

Ms Tan was previously CFO for DuPont’s S$5 billion Titanium Technologies business globally. She has successfully led teams in designing strategies to maximise financial effectiveness and organisational performance. Her expertise includes managing a global treasury centre, setting up regional business headquarters, board relations and governance, regional supply chain and planning, Six Sigma methodology, global liquidity and financing, investments, and risk management.

A Nanyang Business School alumna, Ms Tan is a member of the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants.

Other key appointments in NTU’s senior leadership will be announced in due course.

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Media contact:

Mr Feisal Abdul Rahman

Senior Assistant Director (Media Relations)

Corporate Communications Office

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Tel: (65) 6790 6687

Email: feisalar@ntu.edu.sg

About Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the colleges of Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and its Interdisciplinary Graduate School. NTU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, was set up jointly with Imperial College London.

NTU is also home to world-class autonomous institutes – the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering – and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI), Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N) and the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight (ACI).

NTU has been named the world’s best young university (under 50 years old) by QS for the past four consecutive years, and the world’s fastest rising young university by Times Higher Education in 2015. NTU’s main campus is frequently named among the Top 15 most beautiful university campuses in the world. It has 57 Green Mark-certified (the internationally recognised Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification) buildings of which 54 are certified Green Mark Platinum (equivalent to LEED Platinum). NTU also has a second campus in Novena, Singapore’s medical district.